With this adobe photoshop tutorial you can create a great looking family crest. It can also be used to
design a nice looking coat of arms for your company and logo. I used adobe photoshop 7. you can probably use
older versions as well.

STEPS

CLICK TO ENLARGE SCREENSHOTS

1- Usually, coat of arms have some kind of animal on it that represents a particular clan or family, but it doesnt have to. However, i used This image of the tiger for my main animal

2- I just want to use the image of the tiger not the entire picture, so we need
to cut out just the tiger. In order to do that, we will use the tool called the Magnetic Lasso. With this tool
you woudl then outline the exterior of the tiger, for this one it is easy cuz the lines match up pretty nicely if you
do it with enough patience. look at the picture for what i mean by the tool and outline.

3- Now with the tiger outline, create a new layer.

4- ok, right now, the selected tiger you outline is on the original image of the tiger, we will transfer that onto
the new layer you just create. you must first make sure the new layer is on top of the original tiger picture.
make sure the tiger outline is still select, you jsut use the paint bucket tool and paint the outline onto that new layer.
Look at the screenshot for details

5- ok leave the tiger where it is for now. We will now work on the shield. I used this shield, you can use your own.

6- open up the shield, and we'll put some designs on it. I did it my way, you can do it your way. I started by selecting the Line Tool at a width of about 120px, to give it a nice thick look. Heres a picture

7- Next drag the white tiger you had earlier into this shield layer, and resize it so it fits. After i did it, it looks funny so i changed the tiger to RED instead of WHITE, and also realigned the White Stripe Lines created in the previous step.

8- Now with most coat of arms, there is always a sword thrown into the mix. Make your own sword of just find one off the net, and color it in. That is what i did with this sword so it'll be quicker to work with. just play around with it, i wont show the step for that, its pretty basic. just cut out your sword, go to blending options, and color fill it any color you like, i did mines red.

9- We almost done now. To finish it off, i am going to add a very simple banner below the crest. Start by selecting the shape tool and choose a rectange and jusut make a long shape like how i got in the picture

10- Next, complete the banner by adding in the "flaps" to each side, which is just two squares like this

11- now, there are several ways to do this, but i just did it the long way but it is easy. repeat the same thing you did in the last two previous steps, and color in those new shapes white. afterwards, just resize it so its jsut inside the black shapes to give it a nice border effect. (btw, you can also just do a stroke effect to each of the black shapes in step 9 & 10 and skip this step)

12- you are done, drag that back into the shield layer, if you did it on a
seperate layer like me. Put in your Family name or company name and you
are finish. A very easy Family Crest & Coat of Arms. Experiment and you can
come out with some better designs! GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN! This is how mines
turned out